Man and Wife eBook

Blanche—–­who had not felt equal to
taking her place at the table—­appeared
in the drawing-room afterward.

Sir Patrick came in to tea, with the gentlemen, still
uncertain as to the right course to take in the matter
of the telegram. One look at Blanche’s
sad face and Blanche’s altered manner decided
him. What would be the result if he roused new
hopes by resuming the effort to trace Miss Silvester,
and if he lost the trace a second time? He had
only to look at his niece and to see. Could any
consideration justify him in turning her mind back
on the memory of the friend who had left her at the
moment when it was just beginning to look forward for
relief to the prospect of her marriage? Nothing
could justify him; and nothing should induce him to
do it.

Reasoning—­soundly enough, from his own
point of view—­on that basis, Sir Patrick
determined on sending no further instructions to his
friend at Edinburgh. That night he warned Duncan
to preserve the strictest silence as to the arrival
of the telegram. He burned it, in case of accidents,
with his own hand, in his own room.

Rising the next day and looking out of his window,
Sir Patrick saw the two young people taking their
morning walk at a moment when they happened to cross
the open grassy space which separated the two shrubberies
at Windygates. Arnold’s arm was round Blanche’s
waist, and they were talking confidentially with their
heads close together. “She is coming round
already!” thought the old gentleman, as the two
disappeared again in the second shrubbery from view.
“Thank Heaven! things are running smoothly at
last!”

Among the ornaments of Sir Patrick’s bed room
there was a view (taken from above) of one of the
Highland waterfalls. If he had looked at the
picture when he turned away from his window, he might
have remarked that a river which is running with its
utmost smoothness at one moment may be a river which
plunges into its most violent agitation at another;
and he might have remembered, with certain misgivings,
that the progress of a stream of water has been long
since likened, with the universal consent of humanity,
to the progress of the stream of life.

FIFTH SCENE.—­GLASGOW.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-NINTH.

ANNE AMONG THE LAWYERS.

ON the day when Sir Patrick received the second of
the two telegrams sent to him from Edinburgh, four
respectable inhabitants of the City of Glasgow were
startled by the appearance of an object of interest
on the monotonous horizon of their daily lives.

The persons receiving this wholesome shock were—­Mr.
and Mrs. Karnegie of the Sheep’s Head Hotel—­and
Mr. Camp, and Mr. Crum, attached as “Writers”
to the honorable profession of the Law.

It was still early in the day when a lady arrived,
in a cab from the railway, at the Sheep’s Head
Hotel. Her luggage consisted of a black box,
and of a well-worn leather bag which she carried in
her hand. The name on the box (recently written
on a new luggage label, as the color of the ink and
paper showed) was a very good name in its way, common
to a very great number of ladies, both in Scotland
and England. It was “Mrs. Graham.”